The oxidative cleavage of olefins may generally take place in a single step or in two steps, either directly from olefins, or after a prior hydroxylation step of these compounds.
In general, these processes are known to be often hazardous, toxic and difficult to perform due to the presence of toxic solvents, oxidizing agents and/or catalysts, which are difficult to recycle and/or flammable and hazardous.
In neighboring technologies, the oxidative cleavage of various vicinal diols, especially of dihydroxylated stearic acid, uses a catalyst (gold) supported on alumina, in an oxidizing medium, as is described by Kockritz et al. (Eur. J. Lipid Sci. Technol. 2012, 114, 1327-1332).
Mention may also be made of processes for producing carboxylic acids from vicinal diols using Na2WO4 as catalyst (Santacesaria et al. Catalysis Today, 2003, 79-80, pages 59-65).
However, these carboxylic acid preparation processes are known to be hazardous, difficult to perform and to require the use of catalysts that are often toxic, expensive and difficult to recycle, or that require the use of one or more solvents.
There is thus a need to develop novel technologies allowing the oxidative cleavage of diols for the purpose of obtaining carboxylic acids, which are less difficult to perform, have good (high) degrees of conversion, are economically accessible and are more environmentally friendly.